


When the stars grow

by Adadzio



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Essos, Gen, Mel is a not a great student, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-14 00:21:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9148528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adadzio/pseuds/Adadzio
Summary: Dawn, they called it, in the Common Tongue.A shadowbinder's apprentice prepares to journey west.





	

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt:** Mochthrath (Dawn) + Melisandre
> 
> Total speculation of Mel's past, just for fun ~ I love the idea of Mel knowing Quaithe in some way.

”They will have it in Westeros,” she told herself. Her eyes closed and imagined it, a soothing memory of pale, wispy clouds, of amber light trickling through the pitch blackness of a sky.  _Or was it golden light?_  It had been so long since she had seen such a thing.  
  
”Of what do you speak?”   
  
The red-eyed acolyte blinked and turned to find the voice’s owner.Lysene ink glistened somewhere in a dim corner.She soon spotted the figure huddled over a desk, robed arm moving steadily back and forth, mask barely visible beneath a cowl. The ink brush danced with silent precision across a scroll of aged parchment. 

 _I never hear her, such that she is a forgotten shadow in the room. It is a skill I must learn._  The priestess turned back to the half-shuttered window of her alcove, studying the shapeless silhouettes of the street. _Shapes without faces._  “I cannot say,” she finally answered. “You have no word for it in the Shadowlands.”   
  
The red mask lifted from its hood slightly, lacquer catching a dull sheen of lantern light. “No? Then describe it.” 

Her nose wrinkled up at the command. Somehow her teacher noticed. 

“Melony,” the mask rebuked. From the corner of her eye, Melony saw the ink brush suspended, arm paused in its work. “How am I to teach you the Common Tongue when you think yourself above it all?”

”It is an ugly language.”

”You may find Westeros an ugly place.”

“A barbaric place, they say, with false gods.” Her neck craned up, seeking a deep blueness through the shutters, the place where an eery city met jagged, foggy mountains. There was no sign of anything warm or bright to break up the horizon, but Melony searched night after night. Her muscles ached with the effort, weighed down by the tight metal encasing her throat. 

The red mask was still watching her. “How will you find the man you seek when you cannot even speak his language?” 

Melony sighed in irritation, copper strands of hair displaced by the movement. “This is what it is: It is when R’hllor touches the sky with his hand. If his servants have prayed fervently through the night, and he has mercy on them, he will reach down and take the blackness in one hand and scatter embers with the other. These are stars. This is the holy time, when the stars grow.”  
  
“Grow?”

”Yes, the stars are stoked into sunlight by faithful prayers. And the day begins.” Her eyes closed again, eyelids clamped tightly against the ever-present darkness of Asshai. “The priests call it ‘ñāqes.’” 

 _There is no light here, but I can hear her if I truly listen. I can sense her movements without seeing them._ A gentle scratch of ink against the edge of the parchment. A slick noise as the ink pot was swirled and dipped into.  _Yes, this is a skill I must cultivate. Such power! To heighten the senses, to use the shadows to my advantage—_

“Dawn.” 

Melony’s eyes snapped open. “What?”

The mask tilted—as if in amusement—before ducking to scribe once more. “Dawn is the word.” The mask nodded. “You will see it in Westeros.”

 _Dawn_. Melony tried to wrap her tongue around it, but it was garbled and strange. “Another ugly word,” she muttered. 

But her heart was thudding in its cage, racing to imagine a world beyond the great red temple of her childhood and the horrors that came before it, a world beyond the veiled maegis and their black, writhing streets. A place where the sun shattered the sky. 

Dawn, they called it, in the Common Tongue.  


End file.
